The Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah (1822-87)

by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

One of the few things for which Wajid ‘Ali Shah was not criticised by the British, unless it came under the general heading of debauchery, was his extravagant number of wives. By the end of his life he had married approximately 375 women, more than one for every day of the year. The first question is ‘why?’ and the second must surely be ‘how?’ According to one of his numerous descendants living in Kolkata, the king was such a pious man that he could not allow any females to serve him unless he had contracted a temporary marriage with them. It would not have been decent for him to be alone with them.1 It is an attractive rationalisation and may explain some of the marriages, but certainly not all.

Following the death in 1874 of Prince Hamid ‘Ali, the heir apparent, the title passed to Farid-ud-din Qadr. He was now the eldest surviving son of Wajid ‘Ali Shah, born to Mashuq Mahal in about 1846. He had been first married when he was about six years old, to a daughter of the chief minister, ‘Ali Naqi Khan, who seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of female relatives as brides for the Awadh family. These complicated family intermarriages meant that the king’s second nikah wife, Akhtar Mahal, was also the sister-in-law of Farid-ud-din Qadr.